"Nobility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Odoin, about whom we have no other information, but the form of whose name at once suggests that he was of Gothic, not Roman, extraction. It is possible that this conspiracy indicates the discontent of the old Gothic nobility with the increasing tendency to copy Roman civilisation and to assume Imperial prerogatives which they observed in the king who had once been little more than chief among a band of comrades. But we have not ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... master, is Rubens at his pagan best. These stalwart and handsome females, without a hint of sleek Italian delicacy, include Rubens's second wife, Helena Fourment, the ox-eyed beauty. What blond flesh tones, what solidity of human architecture, what positive beauty of surfaces and nobility of contours! The Rondo is a mad, whirling dance, the Diana and Calista suggestive of a Turkish bath outdoors, but a picture that might have impelled Walt Whitman to write a sequel to his Children of Adam. Such women were born not alone to bear children but to rule the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... generous enthusiasm and self-trust. It was the face of a man who might have bitter awakenings, as well as his dupes, but who might take the same fatuous, happy leaps to disaster again. And yet there was a certain strength, even nobility, in the face, and it was distinctly lovable, and in no weak sense. He looked very like Eddy as he sat there, and, curiously enough, he spoke almost at once ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Of each thing new: by such conformity More grateful to its author, whose bright beams, Though all partake their shining, yet in those Are liveliest, which resemble him the most. These tokens of pre-eminence on man Largely bestow'd, if any of them fail, He needs must forfeit his nobility, No longer stainless. Sin alone is that, Which doth disfranchise him, and make unlike To the chief good; for that its light in him Is darken'd. And to dignity thus lost Is no return; unless, where guilt makes ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... far sturdier sense of personal worth, a far more fearless assertion of equality, and a far more democratic feeling permeating society than, for instance, in the United States. Sweden, on the other hand, is essentially an aristocratic country, with a landed nobility and many other remnants of feudalism in her political and social institutions. Two countries so different in character can never be good yoke-fellows. They can never develop at an even pace, and the fact of kinship scarcely ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... to land on the shores of England like any royal bride; to find the Earl of Hurstmonceux waiting to welcome her; to be introduced to my family; to be presented to her majesty; to be feted by the nobility; lionized by the gentry; and idolized by our own tenantry. In short, she dreamed of a grand royal progress through England, of which every stage was to be a glorious triumph! Ha, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... had Villefort left the salon, than he assumed the grave air of a man who holds the balance of life and death in his hands. Now, in spite of the nobility of his countenance, the command of which, like a finished actor, he had carefully studied before the glass, it was by no means easy for him to assume an air of judicial severity. Except the recollection of the line of politics his father had adopted, and which might interfere, unless he acted ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... at Delphos; but before the queen was recovered from her lying-in, and from her grief for the loss of her precious baby, he had her brought to a public trial before all the lords and nobles of his court. And when all the great lords, the judges, and all the nobility of the land were assembled together to try Hermione, and that unhappy queen was standing as a prisoner before her subjects to receive their judgement Cleomenes and Dion entered the assembly, and presented ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... politic. Another and perhaps even more striking instance we find a century and a half later. Catherine the Great voluntarily turned over the local administration to the nobles and to that end decreed that the nobility organize themselves into provincial associations. But so little did the nobility care for political power and active class prerogative that, in spite of the broadest possible charters, the associations of nobles were never more than social organizations in the ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... entreaties of their wives and children, [20] who were instigated and governed by the clergy of Rome and the monks of the East. The edifying example of the Anician family was soon imitated by the rest of the nobility: the Bassi, the Paullini, the Gracchi, embraced the Christian religion; and "the luminaries of the world, the venerable assembly of Catos (such are the high-flown expressions of Prudentius) were impatient to strip themselves of their pontifical ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... similes, and comparisons is greater still. The clearest of them may be attended by some element of grotesque or paltry association, so that while they illumine the subject they cannot truly be said to illustrate it. The noblest, including those time-honoured metaphors that draw their patent of nobility from war, love, religion, or the chase, in proportion as they are strong and of a vivid presence, are also domineering—apt to assume command of the theme long after their proper work is done. So great is the headstrong power of the finest metaphors, that an author may be incommoded by ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... narrative of all my adventures in France. "I have been ruminating, Mr Simple," said he, "how such a stripling as you could have gone through so much fatigue, and now I know how it is. It is blood, Mr Simple—all blood—you are descended from good blood; and there's as much difference between nobility and the lower classes, as there is between a racer ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... accession to the throne, but all in vain. This evil spirit is as strong to-day as ever. It was but a few years ago that a monster trial took place in Hanover. It showed a frightful state of rottenness within even the most renowned regiments—those of the Guard Corps, in which the scions of nobility hold it an honor to serve. The details of this trial were a shock to the whole country, and it ended by dismissal or expulsion from the army of a score of officers bearing, some of them, the most ancient and honored names within the empire. Even one of the ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... Physicians attending the Grecian Camp, and in Xenophon[150] of Cyrus's having appointed Physicians to his Army; and we learn from Tacitus[151] and Livy[152], that the wounded Romans were received into the Houses of the Nobility, and had Physicians to attend them, and were furnished with Fomentations and other proper Remedies; and from Justin[153], that the Lacedemonians followed the same Method: yet these Authors make no Mention of the particular Oeconomy or ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... the same Savior and the same gospel with the ignorant and debased working classes. Traces of a similar style of feeling are discernible in the letters of the polished correspondents of Hannah More. Robert Walpole gayly intimates himself somewhat shocked at the idea that the nobility and the vulgar should be equally subject to the restraints of the Sabbath and the law of God—equally exposed to the sanctions of endless retribution. And Young makes ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a tiller of the soil,"[2210] says one deputy, "I now dare speak of the antique nobility of my plow. A yoke of oxen once constituted the pure, incorruptible legal worthies before whom my good ancestors executed their contracts, the authenticity of which, far better recorded on the soil than on flimsy parchment, is protected from any ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... return had not made any difference; or, if it had made a difference, she did not actively regret it. The child's new adoration of his father had made her care more for Dion, and even more for Robin; for she felt that Robin was unconsciously loving in his father a strength and a nobility which were new in Dion, which had been born far away across the sea. War destroys, and all the time war is destroying it is creating. Robin was holding a little bit of what the South African War had created as he held his father's hand. For are not the profound truths of the ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Theodor Smirnoff, of the Russian nobility. Her grandmother had tartar blood in her veins and was born Princess Tischinina. Nelka's father was a brilliant man, finishing the Imperial Alexander Lyceum at the head of his class. A versatile linguist, he joined the Russian diplomatic ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... surely forget! The Chevalier Bigot is a distant relative of the Count de Marville, and the Chevalier de Grandmaison is a constant visitor at the Intendant's! But he would not have sat at his table an hour had he not known that he was connected with the nobility. The Count ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... his desire to check the downward progress of the Revolution, brought on him suspicion of treason. Denounced (15th of August 1792) in the Legislative Assembly, he was arrested and imprisoned for ten months at Grenoble, then transferred to Fort Barraux, and in November 1793 to Paris. The nobility of his character was proof against the assaults of suffering. "Better to suffer and to die," he said, "than lose one shade of my moral and political character." On the 28th of November he appeared ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... America were a strange compound of cruelty and cunning, leavened at times by nobility and self-sacrifice. Most of the tribes were perfect little political organizations, and the league of the Iroquois was worthy of a highly civilized race. They were creatures of circumstances, and, while loyal to friends, they were merciless ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... went away again; and the princess herself was frequently abroad in the streets, or at places of amusement, or was entertained by those who worship at the shrine of nobility. ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... Second, and compelled him to put aside all majesty, and like a mere private man to come unto their legate with great submission and humility, so as all his subjects might laugh him to scorn. More than this, they caused bishops and monks, and some part of the nobility, to be in the field against our King John, and set all the people at liberty from their oaths, whereby they ought allegiance to their king; and at last, wickedly and most abominably they bereaved the king, not only of his kingdom, but also of his life. Besides this, they excommunicated and cursed ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... the deterioration of the soldier and the indifference of the patrician. In France the wealth was the accumulation of an immense commerce and the varied labors of the most industrious nation on the earth diverted by a brilliant and corrupt court, a profligate and chivalrous nobility, and ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... composition between this republican Assembly and our own Congresses is in some respects remarkable; for, independently of the very large and indeed altogether disproportionate representation of the nobility or titled classes, we observe a very great preponderance of rich land-owners, representing in their own persons the agricultural and vine-growing interests. Very singular, also, is the small proportion of lawyers, only 155 being classed as advocates, and the magistrates and attorneys swelling the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... leaving only a legacy of eternal disgrace to his wife and innocent child, she showed a spirit becoming a better parentage. In his presence, and in spite of his dissuasions (for he acted with all the nobility one might expect) she took off her veil with her own hands and laid it aside with a look expressive of eternal renunciation. She loves him, sir; and there is no selfishness in her heart and never has been. For all her frail appearance and the mildness of her temper, she ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... wine and ride in a fine coach, but to guide and adorn life for the multitude by forethought, by elegant studies, by perseverance, self-devotion, and the remembrance of the humble old friend,—by making his life secretly beautiful." How fine a picture of the democratic nobility is that! ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... lower Savoy?' 'Because', was the reply, 'there are seigneurs everywhere'.[42] Misery in Brittany was due 'to the execrable maxims of despotism or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility.'[43] There was nothing, he said, in the province but 'privileges and poverty,'[44] privileges of the nobles and poverty ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... began the musician, "or even thirty-five. When I was a young fool at Warsaw, eighteen years old," he babbled. "I was the local prodigy. My first essays in public were, of course, concerts, and I was soon the vogue. And, later, asked as an artistic guest to the chateaux of the nobility in Poland, Kowno, Vitebsk, Wilna, Minsk, Grodno and Volhynia. I was a poet in thought, a lover of all womankind in my dreams, and a conspirator in the inmost chambers of my ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... father, that thou would'st reject him on account of poverty, for I knew our own means sufficient for all our own wants; but I did believe that he who could not boast the privileges of nobility might fail ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... reveled in riches, accumulated at the cost of the colony, and he had in sympathy with him the large landholders, who sought to imitate in their Virginia mansions the pomp and circumstance of the English nobility, while they looked down on the mass of poor whites as vassals and inferiors. The immediate provocation for the so-called Bacon Rebellion was the failure of Governor Berkeley to protect the settlers ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... cannot be bought with mere money nor made in a day, but when placed there with care and intelligence come forth with surprising rapidity and beauty and not only add manifold value to the home and farm, but bespeak for some one a standard of intelligence and nobility that is better than great riches; for he who plants and cares for a tree is of the true, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... he said: "I have never desired bloody punishments to any great extent. But there are punishments quite as appalling, and longer remembered, than death. They are more advisable, because they would reach a greater number. Strip a proud nobility of their bloated estates; reduce them to a level with plain republicans; send them forth to labor, and teach their children to enter the workshops or handle a plow, and you will thus humble the proud traitors." Stevens and Sumner agreed in reducing the Southern ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... lords who had followed Mary Stuart to Scotland was, as we have mentioned, a young nobleman named Chatelard, a true type of the nobility of that time, a nephew of Bayard on his mother's side, a poet and a knight, talented and courageous, and attached to Marshal Damville, of whose household he formed one. Thanks to this high position, Chatelard, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... was more universal than any of these before mentioned, was considered as a vain, profligate wit, and not much esteemed or beloved by anybody, tho admired by all who knew his works. But Franklin's fame was universal. His name was familiar to governments and people, to kings, courtiers, nobility, clergy and philosophers, as well as plebeians, to such a degree that there was scarcely a peasant or citizen, a valet de chambre, coachman, or footman, a lady's maid, or a scullion in a kitchen, who was not familiar with it, and who did not consider him a friend to human kind. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... The perception of a certain range of truth, such as is indicated by Plato, Hegel, Swedenborg, and which is very far from what is called "religious" or "moral," I should regard as the best testimonial that could be offered of a man's probity and essential nobility of soul. Is it possible to imagine a fickle, inconstant, or a sly, vain, mean person reading and appreciating Emerson? Think of the real men of science, the great geologists and astronomers, one opening up time, the other space! Shall mere intellectual acumen be accredited with these ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... means of his agents corrupted the greater part of the nobility of Flanders and Brabant, had laid siege to Maastricht, and, after a defence even more gallant and desperate than that of Haarlem, and several terrible repulses of his soldiers, had captured the city and put the greater part of its inhabitants — men and women — to the sword. After vain entreaties ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... she was always and everywhere a woman in every fibre of her being. By nature and temperament she was fitted to be what she succeeded in remaining to the end—a strong, noble woman, whose greatest strength lay in her tenderness, and whose nobility sprung from her ...
— Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch • Eva Shaw McLaren
... Bigelows, Lawrences, Masons, Russells,—they come with every Commencement-season. Some families have had for every generation in a hundred and fifty years a representative in her halls. There is a patent of nobility in this, such peerage as a republic can rightly confer, the coronet which marks the union of birth and worth. We cannot, we, the Alumni, suffer these our brothers to sleep unhonored. Those who shall come after us, who shall fill our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and blackened eyelids, of intrigues and foolish babbling. Venial faults—it may be thought—innocent displays of tender frailty; but woman's nature demands loftier employments. A great soul craves occupations and recognizes obligations more in harmony with the true nobility of human nature. Rome had no monitor of the higher life until the monks came with their stories of heroic self-abnegation and unselfish toil. The women felt the force and truth of Jerome's criticism of their trifling follies when he said: "Do not ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... that of Imperial Germany, with its federated States and subsidiaries, where royalty and nobility still are potent preconceptions investing the popular imagination, and where loyal abnegation in the presence of authority still is the chief and staple virtue of the common man,—in all such cases virtual abdication of the dynastic initiative ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... not your families to plunge into debauchery; stain not the nobility of your souls; adore not idols which cannot but remain ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... too, the self-approving mind was active; she applauded herself for having given the preference to love over ambition. With the choice of becoming a peeress, she had bestowed her beauty, intellect, wealth upon a man who had nothing to offer but his hopes. Was not this nobler than any nobility of rank? The sentimentality of a hundred novels surged within her; verses of Browning chanted in her brain. "Love is best!" She walked a heroine of passion. All obstacles would fall before her burning resolve. This was living ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... day in other fields of inquiry. Such are the speakers and writers they should invite to their assistance. Instead of wasting their breath in expressions of self-admiration, in threadbare platitudes about the nobility and rights of labor, in appeals to the omnipresent politician, in complaints against labor-saving machinery, in talk about the Eight-Hour law, it would be more encouraging if they would try to supplant foreign workmen by simply ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... tribes; to the northwest, Scandinavians; to the central parts, from the Seine to the Garonne, in the sixth century B.C., Gauls, who soon became the dominant race, and so have remained until this day, masterful and fundamental. When Caesar came, there had grown up in Gaul a martial nobility, leaders of a warlike people, with chieftains whose names are familiar in the mouths and ears of all schoolboys—Aricvistus and Vercingetorix. When Vercingetorix was overthrown at Alesia, Gaul became definitely Roman. For five hundred years it remained ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... more intimate than he wished; and while the guest was uttering something polite about the nobility of missionary work, he placed him in an easy-chair and sought aguardiente for his immediate refreshment. Since the year's beginning there had been no guest for him to bring into his rooms, or to sit beside him in the high seats at table, set apart ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... anything else in Paris or elsewhere. But there were other districts in the great city—now swept away and forgotten—as characteristic in their way as the Quartier Latin. There was the He de Saint Louis, for instance—a Campo Santo of decayed nobility—lonely, silent, fallen upon evil days, and haunted here and there by ghosts of departed Marquises and Abbes of the vieille ecole. There was the debateable land to the rear of the Invalides and the Champ de Mars. There was the Faubourg St. Germain, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... and hopes on Eleanor's part, and gratitude on Maurice's part. But she would not let him say that he was grateful, or that she was generous; he had told her, of course, how Mrs. Houghton had guessed long ago what had happened, and how she had urged him to trust his wife's nobility—but Eleanor would not let him call her "noble"; "Don't say it! And don't be 'grateful,' I just love you," she said; "and if you only knew what it means to me to be able to do anything for you! It's so long since you've ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... bountifully stored there and granted a fair measure of encouragement to transportation, those great inland tundras would be as populous as Sweden; as progressive as Germany." His glance moved to the jury; all the nobility, the fineness, the large humanity of the man was expressed in that moment in his face; a subdued emotion pervaded his voice. "We know the men who forged a way through that mighty bulwark of mountains to the interior were brave, resourceful, determined—they ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Russia has been greatly retarded by the indifference of the nobility, whose vast estates comprise the best land of the empire, in those provinces where improvements might be most easily introduced. Although a large portion of the noble families pass their summers in the country, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... heavy bell of the Cathedral tolled, and all the prisoners were led down to the Grand Hall, that the order of the procession might be arranged. At the large entrance door, on a raised throne, sat the Grand Inquisitor, encircled by many of the most considerable nobility and gentry of Goa. By the Grand Inquisitor stood his Secretary, and as the prisoners walked past the throne, and their names were mentioned, the Secretary, after each, called out the names of one of those gentlemen, who immediately stepped ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... one of a thousand things. With riches merely surpassing those of any citizen, it would have been easy to suppose him engaging to supreme excess in the fashionable extravagances of his time—or busying himself with political intrigue—or aiming at ministerial power—or purchasing increase of nobility—or collecting large museums of virtu—or playing the munificent patron of letters, of science, of art—or endowing, and bestowing his name upon extensive institutions of charity. But for the inconceivable wealth in the actual possession of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... given his name and asked for an interview, offering, after the style of the old romances, his heart and hand to the Signorina Juana di Mancini—a common trick, the success of which is nearly always certain. At Juana's age, nobility of soul increases the dangers which surround youth. A poet of our day has said: "Woman succumbs only to her own nobility. The lover pretends to doubt the love he inspires at the moment when he is most beloved; the young girl, confident and proud, longs to make sacrifices to prove ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... republican, but the Gallic tribes were aristocracies, in which the influence of clanship was a predominant feature; while the German system, although nominally regal, was in reality democratic. In Gaul were two orders, the nobility and the priesthood, while the people, says Caesar, were all slaves. The knights or nobles were all trained to arms. Each went forth to battle, followed by his dependents, while a chief of all the clans was appointed to take command during the war. The prince or chief governor ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wounds of those who were hit by my projectiles. Permit me to point out in passing that, if the bourgeois had not massacred or caused massacres during the Revolution, it is probable that they would still be under the yoke of the nobility. On the other hand, figure up the dead and wounded on Tonquin, Madagascar, Dahomey, adding thereto the thousands, yes, millions of unfortunates who die in the factories, the mines, and wherever the grinding power of capital is felt. Add also those who ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... and inevitably-necessary-to-be-remembered manual, of all that is worthy to be known—which indoctrines the rude in civility, the dull in intellectuality, the heavy in jocosity, the blunt in gentility, the vulgar in nobility, and all of them in that unutterable perfection, of human utterance, that eloquence which no other eloquence is sufficient to praise, that art which, when we call it by its own name of Euphuism, we bestow on it ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... fertile marriages for each decade from 1831 to 1890 have been taken consecutively from those families who have held their title to nobility for at least two preceding generations, thus excluding the more modern commercial middle-class element in the present Peerage, which can be better dealt with elsewhere. We then get the full effect of hereditary stability and a secure position, and do away with any disturbing influence that might ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... a wretched poet, that his name had almost become proverbial," and who gave the title to Dryden's Mac-Flecknoe, is said to have been originally a Jesuit. Langbaine states "that his acquaintance with the nobility was more than with the Muses." In the preface our author says: "This Comedy is taken out of several excellent pieces of Moliere. The main plot out of his Pretieusee's Ridiculee's; the Counterplot of Sganarelle out of his Escole des Femmes, and out of the Escole ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... means to seek relief. Shall the daughter of the noble, though prodigal Zaimi, appear a beggar before her compeers or inferiors—superiors she had none. Shall I bow my head before them, and with servile gesture sell my nobility for life? Had I a child, or any tie to bind me to existence, I might descend to this—but, as it is—the world has been to me a harsh step-mother; fain would I leave the abode she seems to grudge, and in the grave forget my pride, my struggles, my despair. The time will soon ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Nice, on the sea-front. The sun is shining, it is warm, green and fragrant, but windy. An hour's journey from Nice is the famous Monaco. There is Monte Carlo, where roulette is played. Imagine the rooms of the Hall of Nobility but handsomer, loftier and larger. There are big tables, and on the tables roulette—which I will describe to you when I get home. The day before yesterday I went over there, played and lost. The game is fearfully fascinating. After losing, Suvorin fils and I ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... There is no homogeneity, but everywhere a rigid spirit of caste. The longings of South Carolina are essentially monarchical rather than republican; even the common people have become so debauched in loyalty, that very many of them would readily accept the creation of orders of nobility. In Georgia there is something less of this spirit; but the upper classes continually assert their right to rule, and the middle and lower classes have no ability to free themselves. The whole structure of society ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... different schools of Northern art. I wish it were in my power to lay also before the general reader some exemplification of the manner in which these strange principles are developed in the lovely building. But exactly in proportion to the nobility of any work, is the difficulty of conveying a just impression of it: and wherever I have occasion to bestow high praise, there it is exactly most dangerous for me to endeavor to illustrate my meaning, except by reference to the work itself. And, in fact, the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... Lucy Heddon to Sarkeld to meet Temple, and Temple to meet me. Onward I flew. I saw the old woods of the lake-palace, and, as it were, the light of my past passion waning above them. I was greeted by the lady of all nobility with her gracious warmth, and in his usual abrupt manful fashion by Prince Hermann. And I had no time to reflect on the strangeness of my stepping freely under the roof where a husband claimed Ottilia, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that for long years. He said now, simply, "I told you I was born a Lower. Given that, little counts until I fight my way out of it. Had I been born in a feudalist society, I would have attempted to batter myself into the nobility. Under classical capitalism, I would have done my utmost to accumulate a fortune, enough to reach an effective position in society. ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... timbre of his voice was Sicilian. There was the warm, and yet plaintive, sometimes almost whining sound in it that she had often heard coming up from the vineyards and the olive groves. Why was she always comparing him with the peasants? He was not of their rank. She had met many Sicilians of the nobility in Palermo—princes, senators, young men of fashion, who gambled and danced and drove in the Giardino Inglese. Maurice did not remind her at all of them. No, it was of the Sicilian peasants that he reminded her, ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... years ago," said he, "the nobility of Gelderland was so proud that no one who wasn't noble was allowed to buy an estate and ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... perfect love Are ranked as noble virtues everywhere, May we not claim for these three loyal friends A right in such nobility to share? ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... of the kingdom (1422), was sadly in want of money. He alienated the State revenues, he levied excise duties and subsidies in the provinces which remained faithful to his cause, and he borrowed largely from those members of the Church and the nobility who manifested a generous pity for the sad destiny of the King and the monarchy. Many persons, however, instead of sacrificing themselves for their king and country, made conditions with him, taking advantage of his position. The heir to the throne was obliged in many points ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... classes visible in Florence. The nobility—the foreigner—and the people. The nobility, a few princely houses excepted, spend but little, the people work but little, and it would be a marvel how these last lived if it were not for the foreigner. Every autumn brings them their harvest in the shape of a swarm of travellers from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... neither my father nor my grandfather used it, and as the pitiful few acres which went with it is a sterile Bavarian hillside, I have never used it, either. Besides, neither the Peerage nor the Almanac de Gotha make mention of it; but still the patent of nobility was legal, and I could use it despite the negligence ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... father; but Sir John and the duke were more than a match for the counter-conspirators. After a gallant opposition the ladies yielded, and the marriage was celebrated at Hampton Court, "in the presence of the king and queen and all the chief nobility of England." Sir John was old enough to be his wife's father, but that was a trifle. The results of the match were such as might be expected. Coke was restored to the Privy Council, but received no judicial promotion. Sir John Villiers and his wife never passed a happy day together, and before ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Swift seems to have been on the topmost crest of the wave of popularity. Invitations from nobility flowed in upon him, beautiful women deigned to go in search of his society, royalty recognized him. And yet all this time he was only a country priest with a liking ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... died, and all was confusion in the Court; and what with the funeral, the goings and the comings, the plottings and the intrigues, De Lacy was in a maze. The boy King was at Ludlow with Rivers, and it was Nobility against Queen and Woodville until he came for his crowning. And in the turmoil De Lacy was forced to cease, for the nonce, the pursuit of ruddy tresses and grey eyes, and choose where he would stand. ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... the later sort of pirate can be cited than 'Ali Pichinin, General of the Galleys and galleons of Algiers in the middle of the seventeenth century. This notable slaver, without Barbarossa's ambition or nobility, possessed much of his daring and seamanship. In 1638, emboldened by the successes of the Sultan Mur[a]d IV. against the Persians, 'Ali put to sea, and, picking up some Tunisian galleys at Bizerta, set sail with a squadron ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... liquid mud, but had to wait till dark and go over the top in relieving the front line. On this occasion we took over from the Grenadier Guards, which numbers among its officers many of the English nobility. We "bushies" and "outbackers" from the Land of the Kangaroo stepped down into the mud-holes just vacated by an earl, several lords, and as noble and proud a regiment as ever won glory on a battle-field. The Prince of Wales was a staff-captain ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... kind you find in the Almanach de Gotha. I speak of the nobility of the heart and the mind." He was very much ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... tempting it is) to call men like Duerer and Goethe evangelists. They are teachers who charm as well as inform us, as Jesus was; but they are not evangelists in the sense that he was, for they did not deal directly with human life where it is forced most against its distinctive desire for increase in nobility, or is most obviously degraded ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... arrival in Banbury of Signor James Currie's World-Renowned Circus and Grand Unrivalled Troupe of Equestrian Performers, whose feats of equitation and horsemanship have given unfeigned delight to all the courts of Europe, her Majesty the Queen, and the nobility and gentry of this and other countries. Among the principal attractions of this unrivalled troupe are Mr. Vernon Twomley, with his famous trained steed Bucephalus; Madame Orley, with her horse Chimborazo, who ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... and lovesome young lady his wife the daughter of his paternal uncle, so he said in his thought, "There is no Majesty and there is no Might save in Allah, the Glorious, the Great. Verily we were Allah's and unto Him shall we return!" But presently he rgained himself in the nobility of his nature, and he continued, "O Ja'afar, thine intent is pure for that the dame thou sawest yesterday was divorced by her husband; and I will straightway fare to her father and bespeak him to the end that none may lay hand ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... It is not political power. I understand something deeper. I know but one elevation of a human being, and that is elevation of soul. Without this, it matters nothing where a man stands or what he possesses; and with it, he towers, he is one of God's nobility, no matter what place he holds in the social scale. There is but one elevation for a laborer, and for all other men. There are not different kinds of dignity for different orders of men, but one and the same to all. The only elevation of a human being consists in the exercise, growth, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... that was so like the face which, from my first sight of it, had seemed the loveliest in the world. This was a flower that had been the mother of a flower. It was a face more primitive in its beauty, a little less touched with race, than the one I loved, but the same fearless natural nobility was in it, and the figure had the same wild grace of pose, the same ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... their cellars, and there remain. They spend one-tenth of their revenues; the remaining nine-tenths they hoard and divert from circulation. They distribute favors, and are great political leaders. They have not assumed the place of the old nobility, but have taken the latter into their service. Princes are their chamberlains, dukes open their doors, and marquises act as their equerries when they ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... quick in perceiving the merits of new doctrines: the archbishop, therefore, soon succeeded in converting, not merely the princess, but most of her attendants; and a day was appointed for their public baptism. The ceremony was performed with great pomp and solemnity, in the presence of all the nobility and chivalry of the court. The princess and her damsels, clad in white, walked on foot to the cathedral, while numerous beautiful children, arrayed as angels, strewed the path with flowers; and the archbishop, meeting them at the portal, received ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... a steppin' where G. Washington strode." Oh the grandeur of my feelin's! The nobility of 'em! and the quantity! Why, it ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... which give character to the otherwise long and bare wall space of the western facade are called in the Palace of Food Products "The Half Dome of Physical Vigor" and in the Palace of Education "The Half Dome of Philosophy." In dignity and nobility, due to massive size and strength of treatment, in beauty of modeling and restraint of decoration, this effective use of the half-dome is one of the finest architectural achievements on ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... the present disastrous times they had dreaded an augmentation of it. In consequence of the successful operation of Law's scheme, however, the tax was abolished, and now nothing was to be heard among the nobility and clergy but praises of the regent and ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... advance of James IV. into England, when the Mackenzies, forming with the Macleans, joined that miserably-arranged and ill-fated expedition which terminated so fatally to Scotland on the disastrous field of Flodden, where the killed included the King, with the flower of his nobility, gentry, and even clergy. There was scarcely a Scottish family of distinction that did not lose at least one, and some of them lost all the male members who were capable of bearing arms. The body of the King was found, much disfigured with ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... thither with all speed. Then I saw an interesting spectacle. As these higher classes of people arrived, the lower classes were compelled to leave. The room being full, no laborer was allowed to remain if a person of nobility wished to occupy his seat. This peculiar custom or law applies to all public ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... the time of Confucius the Chinese nation seemed to have fallen back into their original condition of lawlessness and oppression. The King's power and authority was laughed to scorn, the people were pillaged by the feudal nobility, and famine reigned in many districts. The foundations of truth and social order seemed to be overthrown. There were teachers of immorality abroad, who published the old Epicurean doctrine, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... workers. Again Waxel avoided mutiny. A meeting was called, another vote taken, the recalcitrants shamed down. The crew lacked more than tools. There was no ship's carpenter. Finally a Cossack, who was afterward raised to the nobility for his work, consented to act as director of the building, and on the 6th of May a vessel forty feet long, thirteen beam, and six deep, was on the stocks. All June, the noise of the planking went on till the mast raised its yard-arms, and ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... of the great church filed a procession of bronzed veterans of the Frankish army; the nobility and the leading people of Rome; the nobles, generals, and courtiers who had followed Charlemagne thither; warriors from all parts of the empire, with their corslets and winged helmets of steel and their uniforms of divers colors; civic functionaries in their gorgeous ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... being enabled to lay before our readers an accurate description of the veritable, or Drawing-room Polka, as danced at Almack's, and at the halls of the nobility and ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... law. With freedom of will he received the gift of conscience, which, enabling him to distinguish between right and wrong, invested him with responsibility, and made disobedience sin. That he can sin is his patent of nobility, that he does sin ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... Susse, called on me to take me in his boat to town, for the purpose of going to Senhor Luis Jose's house in the Rua do Ouvidor, to see the Emperor go in state to the opening of the Constituent and Legislative Assembly. All the great officers of state, all the gentlemen of the household, most of the nobility, and several regiments accompanied him. First marched the soldiers, then the carriages of the nobility and other persons having the entree, nobody driving more than a pair, such being the express order of the Emperor, in order that the rich might not mortify the poor; ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... forces of her nature she threw herself on Karen's pity, tearing from herself, with a humility far above pride and shame, the glamour that had held Karen's heart to hers. Deep instinct guided her spontaneity. Her glamour, now, must consist in having none; her nobility must consist in abasement, her ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... nobility ask me? It is two hours since every Goth quitted the place, except the dead man in the house of the widow Dubhina, and we are breathing freely for once in our lives. Up they went towards the AEmilian ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you are tired of us," Mariana continued. "It's James, really, who is making all the trouble. He has some stupid idea about nobility of conduct and my best good. But the real truth is that he's afraid, for me, of course, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... but they caused no great change in the language. In the year 1066 the Norman Conquest took place, and William the Conqueror became King of England. Large numbers of the Norman French came with him, and French became the language of the court and of the nobility. By degrees our English language grew out of the blending of the Anglo-Saxon of the common people and the Norman French of their new rulers, the former furnishing most of the grammar, the latter ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... in the convent one year, and then, with deep regret, left the nuns, to whom she had become extremely attached. With one of the sisters, who was allied to the nobility, she formed a strong friendship, which continued through life. For many years she kept up a constant correspondence with this friend, and to this correspondence she attributes, in a great degree, that facility in writing which contributed so much to her subsequent celebrity. ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... so neither are a troop of these ignorant Doradoes of that true esteem and value as many a forlorn person, whose con- dition doth place him below their feet. Let us speak like politicians; there is a nobility without heraldry, a natural dignity, whereby one man is ranked with another, another filed before him, according to the quality of his desert, and pre-eminence of his good parts. Though the corruption of ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... given them the signal," said he, "and this servile Russian nobility will rush hither, like fawning hounds, to bow before a new idol and pay it their ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... we cannot believe Spinoza's system taken in its entire completeness, yet we may not blind ourselves to the beauty of his practical rule of life, or the disinterestedness and calm nobility which pervades it. He will not hear of a virtue which desires to be rewarded. Virtue is the power of God in the human soul, and that is the exhaustive end of all human desire. "Beatitudo non est virtutis pretium, sed ipsa virtus. Nihil aliud est quam ipsa animi acquiescentia, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... regardless of the obstacles, possible and positive, which the cooler instinct of the woman generally observes. Zulma's state was more singular and needs a word of explanation. If we have succeeded in painting this character, the reader must have an impression of nobility free from all trace of meanness, and of self-willed force capable of the loftiest generosity. Zulma was a spoiled child, but this defect never dwindled to silliness. None understood better than she the relative fitness of things. There was never a speck of hypocrisy in her composition, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... from the older one. Instead of ballades and rondeaux, it produced odes, elegies, sonnets, and satires. It condemned the common language and familiar style of VILLON and MAROT as vulgar, and sought nobility, elevation, and distinction. To this end it renewed its vocabulary by wholesale borrowing and adaptation from the Latin, much enriching the language, though giving color to the charge of Boileau that RONSARD'S muse "en franais parlait ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... meddled with very small matters. She disliked the smell of woad, a plant used for blue dye, and thereupon prohibited its cultivation. She was displeased with long swords and high ruffs, and commissioned her officers to break the swords and abate the ruffs. None of the nobility dared marry without her consent; no one could travel without her permission. Foreign commerce was subject to her capricious will. The star chamber, the court of high commission, the court martial, the warrants ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Well-borns," as they were called—vessels of no great weight of metal, it is true, but manned, armed, officered, and found better perhaps than any other war-ships in the world; entirely at the instigation of the German Navy League, and out of the pockets of the German nobility. The majority of our own wealthy classes preferred sinking their money in German motor-cars and German pleasure resorts; or one must assume so, for it is well known that our Navy League had long since ceased to exert any ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... conception of the use which was being made of him by his new friends. He was very useful; he had just brains enough, and not too much, to serve their purpose. It delighted Aubrey to air his familiarity with the Court and nobility, and it was convenient to them to know some one whom they could pump without his ever suspecting that he was being pumped. They often required information concerning the movements and present whereabouts of various ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... the meaning of the mystery of pain. And then, perhaps, then surely, we shall each of us be glad that we have suffered. The suffering will make the glory of our happiness. Even now sometimes when I am suffering, Boris, I feel as if there were a kind of splendour, even a kind of nobility in what I am doing, as if I were proving my own soul, proving the force that God has put into me. Boris, let us—you and I—learn to say in all this terror, 'I am unconquered, I ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... Hubert had so longed to know, clad in a long dark dress, with haggard and worn features, which, however, still preserved their native nobility? ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake |
